Agentless Protection

The Deep Security Virtual Appliance provides protection to virtual machines (VMs) in a VMware vSphere environment without requiring the presence of an in-guest Deep Security Agent. Virtual machines are managed as though they had an Agent installed.

The Virtual Appliance provides some distinct security advantages over scenarios with an in-guest Agent:

• The Appliance is isolated from the guest. The guest can operate with only the minimum required software being installed.
• Short-lived and reverted machines for which administrator time may not have been allocated for installing security software can easily and quickly be protected.
• Virtual machines and other Appliances whose operating systems are not directly accessible can be protected, even those machines being managed by other administrators.
• The Deep Security Virtual Appliance is easier to deploy. There is no need to remotely install Agent software on the virtual machine. Even connectivity to the virtual machine is not required.

For detailed instructions for all installation and configuration steps, refer to the Deep Security Installation Guide (vShield) or the Deep Security Installation Guide (NSX).